The Limitations Of Social Media

Posted by Ryan on Mar 14, 2011 in Ryan's Thoughts | 0 comments

I often use this blog to write about the benefits that social media can bring to a business. The fact is, if I offered you a service that would let you listen to what your customers were saying about you behind your back 10 years ago, I could have charged you thousands of dollars a month for it. Now, you can do just that for free. It is game changing, and businesses that ignore that will struggle in the years to come.

However, the fact remains that social is not the be all and end all of marketing. For example, it is estimated that there are 17 million Twitter users in the US. This is certainly a large market, but compared to the total population of 350 million people, it is just a drop in the bucket. Approximately 42% of individuals in the US have a Facebook profile. This is a significant number, but when you consider that everybody gets mail and that 99% of US households have a television (most have more than one TV set), you can see that social media has a long way to go before becoming the dominant form of interaction in the United States.

Social media is still largely the domain of innovators. Certainly, these are people that you want to reach out to. However, it would be a mistake for any business to ignore other forms of marketing. Direct mail, for example, is still one of the most effective forms of marketing out there. It is not sexy, but it does work. Television advertising is still a multi-billion dollar business, and it is not going away any time soon. Newspapers, billboards, and other methods also work well for the right businesses.

The take away is that there is no single method of advertising that is going to work for every business every time. In my experience, a social media campaign works best when combined with other methods of marketing. In fact, using traditional marketing to raise awareness of your website and social efforts is an excellent way to build traffic. Godaddy.com has been doing this for years with excellent results. More and more TV commercials are including social media information, although not as effectively as they could be.

Remember that the vast majority of advertising and marketing should be done with a clear goal in mind. The actual goal can vary depending on your overall strategy, but everything you do should move consumers toward your goal.

In short: Social media campaigns are likely to attract customers that are more engaged, talk more, and tend to be innovators. However, ignoring traditional forms of marketing is not a good move for most businesses, given that the vast majority of prospects are not using these tools.